Part 24

About April 1652, we begin to find dissent taking recognisable forms. There were now Antinomians, Antitrinitarians, Familists,[156] and Seekers, as well as Brownists, Independents, and Erastians. Where there had formerly been no avowed Anabaptists, there were now many, ‘sae that thrice in the week--namely, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday--there were some dippit at Bonnington Mill, betwixt Leith and Edinburgh, both men and women of good rank. Some days there would be sundry hundred persons attending that action, and fifteen persons baptised in one day by the Anabaptists.’ Among the converts was ‘the Lady Craigie Wallace, a lady in the west country.’--_Nic._ In autumn, at Cupar, Mr Brown, preacher to Fairfax’s regiment, re-baptised several of the soldiers ‘in the Eden, near to Airdrie’s lodging, by dipping them over head and ears, many of the inhabitants looking on.’--_Lam._

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[Sidenote: 1652.

MAR.]

[Sidenote: 1652.]

The Castle of Dunnottar was now almost the only place of strength in the kingdom which resisted the English arms. It held out with a small garrison under the command of George Ogilvie of Barras, whose anxiety to maintain his post was increased by the consideration that within these sea-girt walls rested the regalia of the kingdom--the crown, sceptre, and sword of state--which had been consigned by the Committee of Estates to this fort, under the care of the Earl Marischal, as being the strongest place in the kingdom that remained untaken after the reduction of Edinburgh Castle. For many months, Ogilvie and his little garrison had defied the English forces; but now it was likely that he could not hold out much longer--in which case, of course, the regalia must fall into the hands of the enemy. The Earl Marischal had been taken with the Committee of Estates at Alyth, and shipped off to London as a prisoner. He contrived, however, to send by a private hand the key of the closet in which the regalia lay, to his mother, the Dowager-countess, who by the advice of her son, opened a communication with Mr James Grainger, minister of Kineff, a person in whom the family reposed great faith, with a view to his assisting in the conveying away of the precious ‘honours.’ The minister and his wife, Christian Fletcher [posterity will desire the preservation of her whole name], entered heartily into the wishes of the countess.[157] Mrs Grainger, by permission of the English commander, visiting the wife of the governor of the castle, received from that lady, but without the knowledge of her husband, the crown into her lap. The sceptre and sword, wrapped up in a bundle of _hards_ or lint, were placed on the back of a female attendant. When Mrs Grainger and her maid returned through the beleaguering camp, it appeared as if she were taking away some lint to be spun for Mrs Ogilvie. So far from suspecting any trick, the English officer on duty is said to have helped Mrs Grainger upon her horse. The castle was rendered three months afterwards, when great was the rage of the English on finding that the regalia were gone. It was adroitly given out that they had been carried beyond sea by Sir John Keith, a younger brother of the earl, and handed to King Charles at Paris.

[Sidenote: 1652.]

In reality, on reaching the manse of Kineff, Mrs Grainger had delivered the crown, sceptre, and sword to her husband, who took the earliest opportunity of burying them under the floor of his church, imparting the secret of their concealment to no one but the Countess Marischal. To the credit of the worthy minister and his wife, they preserved their secret inviolate till the Restoration, eight years afterwards, when ‘the honours’ were exhumed, and replaced under proper custody. An order of the Scottish parliament, dated January 11, 1661, rewarded Mrs Grainger with two thousand merks; Ogilvie was created a baronet; while Sir John Keith, whose immediate concern in the affair does not appear to have been great, was made Knight Marischal of Scotland, with a salary of £400 yearly; to which rewards was added in 1677 a peerage under the title of Earl of Kintore.[158]

* * * * *

‘In these times, the English commanders had great respect to justice, and in doing execution upon malefactors, such as thieves, harlots, and others of that kind, by scourging, hanging, kicking, cutting off their ears, and stigmating of them with het irons.’--_Nic._

The diarist acknowledges that the English judicature established at Leith _condemned_ the native one by its impartiality, suitors returning from it ‘with great contentment.’ He adds: ‘To speak the truth, the English were more indulgent and merciful to the Scots nor the Scots were their awn countrymen and neighbours. They filled up the rooms of justice-courts with very honest clerks,’ &c.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: MAR. 29.]

Being Monday, a celebrated eclipse of the sun took place between eight and eleven in the morning, with a perfectly clear sky. ‘The whole body of the sun did appear to us as if it had been covered with the moon; only there was a circle about the sun that appeared somewhat clear without any light [the corona?]. At that time there did a star appear in the firmament, near to the place of the eclipse.’ ‘There was ane manifest darkness for the space of some moments.’--_Lam._ ‘The time of the eclipse it was exceedingly fearful and dark, to the terror of many.’--Nic. Another account says, the darkness continued about eight minutes, and the people began to pray to God.[159] ‘The like, as thought by astrologers, was not since the darkness at our Lord’s passion. The country people, tilling, loosed their ploughs, and thought it had been the latter day.... The birds clapped to the ground.’--_Law._ The day of this eclipse was long remembered, under the name of MIRK MONONDAY.

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[Sidenote: APR. 20.]

[Sidenote: 1652.]

Died at the Wemyss in Fife, Eleanour Fleming, Countess of Wemyss, without children. She had been married to her husband only two years, but in that time had made him, if report spoke true, ‘a hundred thousand merk worse’ than before. ‘She caused her husband give a free discharge to her brother, the Lord Fleming, of her whole tocher, being about twenty thousand merks Scots, before any of it was paid to him. She caused her husband and her brother to give Mr Patrick Gillespie a bond of four thousand merks.... She caused also a door to be strucken through the wall of her chamber, for to go to the wine-cellar; for she had, as is said by many, a great desire after strong drink.’--_Lam._ Verily, a trying sort of lady for a quiet nobleman like Lord Wemyss, who nevertheless ventured on a third wife before the year was out--the mother of Anne Duchess of Monmouth.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: JUNE 17.]

‘It pleased God to lay the town of Glasgow desolate by a violent and sudden fire.... The far best part of the fore streets and most considerable buildings were burnt, together with above fourscore lanes and closes, which were the dwellings of above a thousand families, and almost all the shops and warehouses of the merchants, many whereof are near by ruined. Besides, a great many more of widows, orphans, and distressed honest families, having lost what they had, are now put to starving and begging. The like of this fire has not been formerly heard of in this nation.’--_Nic._ ‘It was said 1060 houses burnt.’--_C. P. H._

Five days after this fire, the Town Council appointed ‘the provost, with John Bell, to ride to Ayr, to the English officers there, wha has been here and seen the town’s lamentable condition--such as Colonel Overton and others--and to obtein from them letters of recommendation to such officers or judges who sits in Edinburgh, to the effect that the same may be recommendit by them to the parliament of England, that all help and supply may be gotten thereby that may be, for the supply of such as has their lands and guids burnt.’[160]

It must have been with a sore heart that the newly subjugated city of the west condescended to beg from the parliament of the sectaries. The case, however, was one of extreme misery, for the resources of Scotland, and of the west as much as anywhere, had been exhausted by the war, so that without foreign help it must have been impossible to repair the calamity.

Little more than four years after this period, Robert Baillie speaks of Glasgow as much revived. ‘Our people,’ he says, ‘has much more trade in comparison than any other: their buildings increase strangely both for number and fairness.’ He adds, that in his time the city had been more than doubled.

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[Sidenote: JULY.]

[Sidenote: 1652.]

In a General Assembly which sat at Edinburgh, sixty-five of the clergy protested against the lawfulness of the last General Assemblies, in which resolutions in favour of the king had been sanctioned. Andrew Cant, Samuel Rutherford, and Robert Traill were the leaders of this zealous faction--the _Protesters_ or _Remonstrators_--against whom the censures of the kirk were threatened by the majority in vain. By this schism, the hitherto admired unity of the Scottish kirk was broken up, and henceforth, for several years, there scarcely ever was a meeting of any of its courts unmarked by scenes of indecent violence. At a synod held at Glasgow in October, two days being spent in contentions about the choice of a moderator, the meeting dissolved without attempting any other business.--_Nic._ Not long after, when the General Assembly ordered a fast for the sins of the nation, and because ‘few were seeking the things of Jesus Christ,’ the Remonstrators disallowed it, and appointed among themselves ‘a day of humiliation for that humiliation.’ In all matters regarding the settlement of ministers in parishes, there was furious and uncompromising war for a series of years between the two parties.

* * * * *

This summer was remarkable for clear, dry, warm weather, parching up the herbage, and producing exceedingly light crops on the best lands. The harvest commenced in June, and in a field near Dundee there were _stooks_ on the 7th of July. At the end of July and beginning of August, the harvest was general; and before the end of the latter month, all was ‘in’--circumstances unexampled, and which have perhaps never again occurred. ‘The pease wallowed [that is, faded in the bloom] a fortnight before Lammas, whereas some years they continue till Michaelmas.’--_Lam._ ‘All the corn was got in without rain, and long before the usual time. The like harvest was in England.’ ‘It is truly reported that in England there was such abundance of white butterflies as was never heard of before. They destroyed all cabbage; and divers cobles coming from sea, hardly could see the land for them.’--_Nic._

The summer ‘produced ripe wine-berries and grapes, and abundance of Scotch chestanes openly sauld at the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh, and baken in pasties at banquets.’--_Nic._

[Sidenote: 1652.]

The weather, strange to say, remained of the same character all the latter part of the year, so that fruit-trees had a second blossoming in November, and some of them brought forth fruit, ‘albeit not in perfection.’ The furze and broom bloomed again; the violet, not due till March, presented its modest head in November. Birds began to build their nests, and lay eggs, at or near Martinmas, and salads and sybows were cried and sold in Edinburgh on the 27th of November.--_Nic._

* * * * *

The letters sent home by the English soldiery now marching through the Highlands, describe the country as mountainous, yet the valleys rich; the houses of earth and turf so low that the horsemen sometimes rode over them; the people generally going with plaids about their middles, both men and women; ‘simple and ignorant in the things of God, and some of them as brutish as heathens;’ nevertheless, ‘some did hear the English preachers with great attention and groaning.’[161]

* * * * *

In some churches in Fife, as Kirkcaldy and Kennoway, the English soldiers ‘did pull down the stool of repentance; they did sit in them also, in contempt, in some places where they came, in time of sermon.’ Several ministers were openly challenged for their expressions in prayers and sermons, by these soldiers. Mr George Hamilton at Pittenweem was so troubled by some of Fairfax’s regiment, that he had to break off; ‘at which time there was great uproar in the church there.’--_Lam._

* * * * *

[Sidenote: AUG.]

The Earl of Crawford, having been taken by the English at Alyth a twelvemonth before, now lay a prisoner in the Tower. The countess--a sister of the late Duke of Hamilton--desiring to visit her husband in his affliction, left Scotland for the purpose in a stage-coach which had recently been established for the keeping up of communication between the two countries--‘the journey coach,’ says Lamont, ‘that comes ordinarily between England and Scotland.’ We do not learn the periods of departure, or any other detail regarding this vehicle; but from a paragraph which occurs under May 1658, we may presume that it did not go oftener than once in three weeks, and charged for a seat fully as much as a first-class railway ticket of the present day.

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[Sidenote: SEP. 30.]

‘There came into the very brig of Leith ane little whale, which rendered much profit to the English.’--_Nic._

[Sidenote: 1652.]

This ‘little whale’ would probably be a stray member of a flock of the _Delphinus globioceps_, which so frequently are embayed and slaughtered in Zetland and the Faröe Islands. The appearance of such an animal in Leith harbour is an event of a very rare character.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: OCT.]

Four English gentlemen, Messrs George Smith, John Martin, Andrew Owen, and Edward Mosley, the commissioners appointed by Cromwell for the administration of justice in Scotland in place of the Court of Session, commenced their labours in the criminal department at Edinburgh. Three days were spent in the trial and fining of persons of impure life, of whom there were above sixty brought before the judges in a day. ‘It is observable,’ says an English newspaper of the time, ‘that such is the malice of these people, that most of them were accused for facts done divers years since, and the chief proof against them was their own confession before the kirk, who are in this worse than the Roman religion, who do not make so ill a use of their auricular confession. Some of the facts were committed five, ten, nay, twenty years. There was one Ephraim Bennet, a gunner in Leith, indicted, convicted, and condemned for coining sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns. Also two Englishmen, Wilkinson and Newcome, condemned for robbing three men, and for killing a Scottishman near Haddington in March last. But that which is most observable is, that some were brought before them for witches, two whereof had been brought before the kirk about the time of the armies coming into Scotland, and having confessed, were turned over to the civil magistrate. The court demanding how they came to be proved witches, they declared they were forced to it by the exceeding torture they were put to, which was by tying their thumbs behind them, and then hanging them up by them: two Highlanders whipped them, after which they set lighted candles to the soles of their feet, and between their toes, then burned them by putting lighted candles in their mouths, and then burning them in the head: there were six of them accused in all, four whereof died of the torture.... Another woman that was suspected, according to their thoughts, to be a witch, was twenty-eight days and nights with bread and water, being stripped stark naked, and laid upon a cold stone, with only a haircloth over her. Others had hair-shirts dipped in vinegar put on them, to fetch off the skin.’--_Mercurius Politicus_.[162] The resolution of the judges to inquire into these cruelties is intimated.

[Sidenote: 1652.]

Regarding a man accused of witchcraft, it is mentioned a few days later by the same newspaper, that he first confessed a number of ridiculous things, including frequent converse with the devil, but before the judges he denied all, and said that he _had only been in a dream_. ‘The truth is, he lived in so poor a condition, that _he confessed or rather said anything that was put into his head_.... By this you may guess upon what grounds many hundreds have heretofore been burnt in this country for witches.’ A most pregnant remark, truly.

Whitelocke intimates letters from Scotland at this time, stating that sixty persons, men and women, had been accused of witchcraft before the commissioners for the administration of justice in Scotland at the last circuit; but ‘they found so much malice and so little proof against them, that none were condemned.’[163]

The Scottish civil bench having not long been free from an evil reputation for _budds_ or bribes, and to the last liable to the charge of partiality, it is alleged that the English judges rather surprised the public by their equitable decisions. It is added that some one, in a subsequent age, was lauding to the Lord-president Gilmour, the remarkable impartiality of these judges and the general equity of their proceedings, when the Scottish judge answered in his rough way: ‘Deil thank them, they had neither kith nor kin!‘[164]

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[Sidenote: 1653.

FEB. 11.]

A person who was ‘both man and woman, _a thing not ordinar in this kingdom_,’ was hanged at Edinburgh on account of some irregularities of conduct. ‘His custom was always to go in a woman’s habit.’--_Lam._ This person passed by the name of Margaret Rannie. ‘When opened by certain doctors and apothecaries, [he] was found to be two every way, having two hearts, two livers, two every inward thing....’--_C. P. H._ The same day, an old man was burnt for warlockry, ‘wha had come in and rendered himself to prison, confessing his sin, and willing that justice be execute on him, for safety of his saul.’--_Nic._

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[Sidenote: JUNE.]

Early in this month, a number of _pellochs_ or porpoises were thrown ashore dead on the coast of Fife; ‘whilk was taken to be very ominous.’--_Nic._

[Sidenote: 1653.

JULY 20.]

[Sidenote: 1653.]

The humiliation of the ecclesiastical system of Scotland, lately so triumphant, was this day completed by the breaking up of the General Assembly at the order of Cromwell. The court had met in Edinburgh, and the moderator, Mr David Dickson, had prayed and begun to call the roll, when ‘there comes in two lieutenant-colonels of the English forces, and desired them to be silent, for they had something to speak to them. So one of the lieutenant-colonels [Cotterell] began to ask them by what authority they met--if by authority of the late parliament, or by authority of the commander-in-chief, or if by the authority of their late king? [Mr David Dickson, the moderator of the former assembly, ‘said to him: “Sir, you ask by what authority we sit here; we sit, not as having authority from any power on earth, but as having power and authority from Jesus Christ; and by him, and for him, and for the good of his church, do we sit.” Cotterell answered: “You are to sit no more;” whereby he declared himself, and them that employed him, enemies to Christ.’--_C. P. H._]... He desired further, that all the names of the members of the assembly might be given him. The moderator replied that they could not give them, because they were not called; but if he would have a little patience till they called the roll, he should have them. He answered, if it were not longsome, he should do it. So the moderator began at the presbytery of Argyle, to examine their commission. Here the English officer replied that that would prove tedious, so that he could not wait upon it, but desired them to remove and begone; and if they would not, he had instructions what to do. [‘He would drag us out of the room.’--_Bail._] Upon this the moderator protested, in the name of the assembly, that they were Christ’s court, and that any violence or injury done to them might not hinder any meeting of theirs when convenient occasion should offer itself. He desired they might pray a little before they dissolved. The moderator began prayer; and after he had spoken five or six sentences, the English officer desired them again to be gone. Notwithstanding, the moderator went on in prayer, but was forced at length to break off. So they arose and came forth. [‘When we had entered a protestation of this unexampled violence, we did rise and follow him; he led us through the streets a mile out of town, encompassing us with foot-companies of musketeers and horsemen without; all the people gazing and mourning as at the saddest spectacle they had ever seen.’--_Bail._] They were guarded on both hands up the way to the Weigh-house, where they were carried along to the Port, and thence to the Quarry Holes [Bruntsfield Links], where they made them to stand. The English required again all their names; they said they were most willing. So they told all their names. So the moderator protested again at that place. After their names were written, they discharged them to meet again, under the pain of being breakers of the peace.... The English desired them to go back to Edinburgh and lodge there all night, and be gone before eight o’clock next day; and discharged that not above two of them should be seen together.’--_Nic._

‘The day following, by sound of trumpet, we were commanded off the town, under pain of present imprisonment. Thus our General Assembly, the glory and strength of our church, is crushed and trod under foot. Our hearts are sad, our eyes run down with water, we sigh to God against whom we have sinned, and wait for the help of his hand.’--_Bail._

The suppression of the supreme church-court was followed (August 4) by a proclamation at Edinburgh, ‘discharging the ministry to pray for the king, or to preach anything against the title of England to Scotland. Mr Robert Lawrie, in his prayer, prayed for the king. When he came from the pulpit, he was carried to the Castle, but stayed short while, because an Englishman would be caution that he should answer whenever he should be called. Notwithstanding, the ministry, finding it a duty lying on them by the Covenants, continued all of them praying for the king, and gave their reasons for it to the English commissioners.’--_C. P. H._

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[Sidenote: (SEP.)]

The heat of the summer 1652, and the earliness of the harvest, had not been attended with such plenty as to produce extraordinary cheapness. During this summer of 1653, wheat was £1, 5s. sterling per boll, and the inferior grains about 20s. An excellent crop having been secured, ‘the prices fell strangely, so that from Michaelmas till the end of the year, oats were at [6s. 8d.] per boll, and wheat [11s. 8d. and 13s. 4d.].’--_Lam._

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The Trembling Exies--that is, ague--was this year ‘exceeding frequent through all parts of this nation, in such condition as was never seen before ... the smallpox also, whereof many people, both old and young, perished.’--_Nic._

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[Sidenote: DEC.]

[Sidenote: 1653.]